


No Matter

by dizzy



Category: Glee RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-22
Updated: 2015-03-22
Packaged: 2018-03-19 00:38:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3589749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dizzy/pseuds/dizzy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Covering the few days just after the Glee finale, where Darren was in Paris and Chris was spotted in London.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Matter

There reaches a point where Darren feels so full of contradicting emotions that he actually thinks he'll crack from it. In a heartbeat he can go from confident, ready to surf the forward momentum of his life, to shaken with what he's walking away from. He has to swallow against the sadness of all the faces he won't be seeing every day, because he knows how much that sucks. He's done it before - leaving high school, leaving college. He's walked away from a time and a place that made him happy, lured by the mystery of what might be out there that's a little bit better, and he's learned how okay that can really be.

Standing still wouldn't do any good, not when the people surrounding you aren't living static lives either. No one wants to be the last person left in a room filled with ghosting memories. 

So yeah, he's putting one foot in front of the other, and he's happy to be doing it but finding that happiness day after day is an exhausting process.

He tells Chris that expecting sympathy and maybe cuddles but instead gets a fond eye roll and a dose of non-sentimental logic. "You're not exhausted from feeling too much. You're exhausted because you're making a run for most cross-country flights in a month. Did you really think you could keep fucking with the space-time continuum with all of that East to West coast travel and walk away with absolutely no consequences? Your body doesn't even know when it's supposed to sleep, much less when you'll actually let it." 

Darren grumps at him. "But-" 

"Nope." Chris shakes his head. "Sorry. I mean, if you really want to cry crocodile tears because the show ended, call up Jenna." 

Darren decides that Chris at least still owes him the cuddles, so he kicks at Chris until Chris laughs and moves over, giving Darren room to join him on the couch in their Paris suite. 

Chris caves to the power of the Darren Snuggle in record time. 

*

The last thing he expects is to find Chris waiting for him after the concert, maudlin and introspective.

"Everything okay?" Darren asks, a little bit worried. 

"Yeah." Chris sighs. "I guess, I just - fuck, don't laugh at me." 

"I'll totally laugh," Darren reassures him. "But what is it?" 

"You sang that song and it just-" 

Darren gives him the most shit-eating-est of grins. "It got to you, didn't it?" 

"I hate you." Chris scowls. "I guess it did." 

"Come on, I knew you weren't made of stone. You were as much a mess that last day as the rest of us." Darren's voice gentles with the reminder. 

"I thought it was just... empathetic sentiment," Chris admits. "I was sad while I was there but I've also been looking forward to this show being over for a year." 

"I'm not afraid of moving on or letting go... it's just so hard to say goodbye to what I know..." Darren hums softly. 

Chris hits him. "Stop that. Stop singing at me. That is not an answer to everything." 

Darren pulls him in close and kisses his temple. "I know." 

Chris slumps against him. "I went straight from high school to that being my life." 

"I know," Darren says again. 

"And I woke up one day a couple weeks ago when you were gone and I just laid there in bed, thinking." 

Darren kisses that same sweet spot of soft skin, quiet because he knows sometimes Chris just needs a minute to get his words out. 

"And it felt scary. I felt like I did that first day I walked onto the set. Like - what's next, where do I go, what do I do?" Chris finishes. "Nothing will ever be that scary, but it's..." 

"Still scary?" Darren asks. "Yeah, I mean, that's not gonna change." 

He doesn't offer Chris platitudes and he doesn't try to tell Chris that Chris isn't alone. Even if he tried, Chris wouldn't accept it. 

They're all alone on their own special paths, and Chris gets it, Darren gets it. They don't make decisions for each other and they don't try to fix the world around them. 

They just face it head on together. What Darren can do for Chris right now is listen when Chris wants to talk, be there when Chris wants to lean on someone, be his biggest cheerleader when things go right and his best friend when things go wrong. 

They're partners. They're not two halves of the same whole heart, they're just two whole hearts that work magnificently well in tandem with each other. 

They're also two people who have gone through hell and back figuring out how to make this work and they're both aware of how lucky they are that they did make it work in time to step past the safe boundaries of a shared workplace and still know that they'll have each other. Even with how much they both wanted it, there was never a guarantee. 

"Oh god, now you look all pensive." Chris sighs. "Don't, don't do it." 

Darren stretches out on the bed. "Come on. Let's be emotional messes together." 

"You're just doing that weird super touchy feeling thing now, aren't you?" Chris flops down beside him. "Touch sponge." 

"Sometimes I regret the things I say to you while I'm drunk." Darren closes his eyes. There's an itch at the corner of his jaw and he doesn't want to move his arms so he turns his head to rub against the pillow and scratch it. 

When he looks back up Chris is giving him a crinkly-eyed smile. "You're an idiot."

"Nuh uh, you," Chris says. 

*

Chris is gone when Darren wakes up. 

That's usually how it is. Doesn't matter if it's a party or a hotel bedroom, Chris wants out with no fuss. 

Darren lays in bed alone, the sheets twisted under his naked body. He stares up at the ceiling and thinks about Chris waking up alone in his own bed like he'd described. 

He can't really get what Chris is going through, entirely. Chris can't really get what Darren's going through, either. It's something big and marvelous and new for both of them, things that take them so far apart from each other. 

Is Chris as scared of what the distance could mean? Does he lay awake at night sometimes worry about it? Is that what keeps him texting, calling, what keeps them reaching out for each other? 

Maybe that's what it takes. The fear of losing something has to be real enough. There have to be consequences. 

It has to matter enough not to say goodbye. 

Hell, he thinks, he could write a whole song about that. Maybe he will. 

The first time he played This Time for Chris, he'd seen the faint confusion on his face. "It's good," Chris had said, not offering much more. 

"It's about us," Darren had explained. "And everyone else, but, you know, us." 

"I could tell." Chris hadn't said anything else beyond that. 

Darren rolls over, stretching past the spot Chris had slept in, and grabs his cell phone from the nightstand. He opens up his text messages and types out to Chris, "When you said you got upset listening to me sing, what song was it?" 

Chris replies back almost instantly. "I look at everything I was and everything I ever loved and I can see how much I've grown." There's a pause, and then: "This time I know it's never over." 

Darren starts to type back another line from the song, but he gets another text before he can finish it. 

Chris writes: "And don't you dare quote lyrics back at me. We are not teenagers and I refuse to be that cliche." 

Darren laughs and sends back an emoji sticking it's tongue out. 

*

Darren thinks about going back to sleep, but in the end he drags himself out of bed and through a shower so he can go meet some of his former-co stars and hopefully still occasional friends for a meal. 

He's not surprised when Kevin looks at him and says, "Have you  heard from Chris? He holding up okay?" 

And yeah, Kevin knows that Darren's the guy to ask, and Darren knows that Kevin knows, and that's how this whole thing really works. He shrugs and plays nonchalant as he says, "Yeah, I think he's doing okay." 

"We all are, aren't we?" Kevin asks, looking around. "I mean, it was a pretty good run while it lasted, but on to bigger and better?" 

"Yeah." Darren glances down at his phone, the background photo newly changed to his favorite picture of himself and Chris. "Bigger and better." 

**Author's Note:**

> [reblog on tumblr">](http://alittledizzy.tumblr.com/post/114272698680/no-matter-chris-darren-1-5k-pgbecause)


End file.
